Nov 14 2006
Immigration Hardliners Threaten Moderates Again
The ‘Fence Only’ crowd, which helped bring about the Republican debacle, are at it again and threatening further damage to Reps if they don’t get their way. Just like Cleavon Little holding a gun to his own head in Blazing Saddles, they bring us this silliness:
Now that Democrats are in control on Capitol Hill, President Bush has expressed hopes of getting a bipartisan immigration bill. The only bipartisan bill that can get past a Democratic Congress is an amnesty bill, which can be a down payment on another Republican defeat in 2008.
If the people in the White House do not understand how outraged their supporters were at this year’s attempt to pass an amnesty bill for illegals — virtually guaranteeing that even more millions will come — then it is hard to know what message they got from the Republicans’ recent debacle at the polls.
What a bunch of BS. There are plenty of PENALTIES in the Comprehensive Immigration Bill for those who are working here illegally and who want to become sanctioned immigration workers. First there was the requirement to pay back taxes – which is not a minor penalty by a long shot. Since paying back the IRS includes interest, this is a burden very few could afford to do. Then there was the requirement to have a background check – which could lead to deportation if a criminal record was found. This would eliminate the hard core, violent criminals from the ‘white collar’ crime of improper paperwork. I was a fan of a registration fee, to offset the program costs, as well as tax on employers. So no free rides anywhere. Plus, no one involved would become an American instantaneously. Those who worked here could not apply any of that previous time towards citizenship – it was all to be nullified (another penalty).
But the “fence only crowd” are completely irrelevant, as is this threat. If they are threatening to do more damage in 2008 than they did in 2006 then count me out of the Republican party. I would rather work a comprehensive solution than listen to cries of retribution for not toeing the line. If these ‘pure cons’ want to create the Buchanan party – then fine, go ahead. The Reps in the House – who pushed this threat last cycle and alienated most of the ‘legal’ immigrants who can vote (for the obtuse, that makes these voters US citizens) – need to realize they have no power now. They are not going to be engaged in this debate in any serious manner. And temper tantrums like this are not going to fix that reality. They gambled and lost. It is over. The ‘Fence Only” crowd is out of power and just filled with empty, angry threats.
There are penalties for the illegal workers, so there is no amnesty. And if anyone is going to infer or say those of us who do not agree with these exaggerations are for law breaking, or somehow inferior in another way, I got a message: the independents select who wins elections. This cycle it wasn’t the ‘Fence Only’ crowd who were selected. The inferior ones are the ones who have no political power right now. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge….This is not “betrayal”, it is liberation.
Addendum: I want to make this point before I go into the comments and possibly get turned off to the Reps again, but here is the deal. (1) The ‘Fence Only’ crowd got their fence only passed. (2) They said comprehensive legislation had to come later. (3) It is later. (4) The ‘Fence Only’ crowd has no political power. I should not have jumped to item 4 alone without stepping through the other three points. But if the hard liners want to take their marbles home and be angry because there is INSUFFICIENT punishment for the crime of making a living – so be it. Sit home.
I suspect, to some extent, that folks feel strongly one way or the other about the fence depending on how much they are directly affected by illegals and the “costs” they create. I’m in AZ where we’re overrun by illegals. I think all talk about amnesty, etc, is just blather until there is a fence to slow the flow – then we can talk about other programs, what to do with folks who are here. Frankly, I could care less what happens with them once the fence is there to slow the flow. The fence costs a tiny percentage of the primary, secondary, tertiary costs of illegals overrunning hospitals, social services, stealing, trashing, etc.
Now, when I say AZ is overrun, I mean exactly that. All AZ has had to do is make laws a little bit stronger than the socialist republiks of CA, OR, and WA, and they all head there once they get into trouble here, or can’t get the freebies and social services they want here. In California, the problems are extreme, to where hospitals have had to close down, emergency services are run into the ground, social services – well the republiks just tax more. The citizens really feel the pain there.
Sure the veggies are cheaper for the rest of the country because of the cheap labor, but the cheap labor is highly subsidized by the citizens in the various republiks who refuse to do anything about the secondary, tertiary costs of supporting illegals. I suppose if CA were to tax the veggies heading out of state commensurate with the real costs they incur – then maybe the rest of the country would start hollering about a fence too.
All this nonsense about targeting the employers, etc – nonsense. There are dozens of valid styles of A-cards, social security cards. The “custom” ones generally look more professionally done and more “legal” than the legal ones. I worked in ag for a while in one of the republiks, and there just isn’t any way for employers to validate them in any reasonably timely fashion at 0430 when the crop needs to come off, you got half the workers you expected, and half of them you never saw before. About the only thing I could do is send some of them away if they were too dumb to not put 987-65-4321 for a SS number.
AMA:
Well that was a long time ago. My father in law was a middleaged man when my ex was born. It was in the fourth grade when the teacher, a German herself, said “From this day forward you will speak English in school”. That was that.
He was second generation. But back in those days before WW2 it was not unusual to find neighborhoods in cities where people spoke German or Italian or whatever.
I have not changed my mind, I think fence only people were short sighted and I still do and I think it contributed to the loss of the election.
AJ, you have expressed an inordinate fear of a “group” without an army, navy or air force, as if they could force you on your knees to bow to Mecca…your inferiority complex puts mine to shame,
particularly since the Hispanics are already here in large numbers and since Mexican government officials have already called them
a force to ultimately stage reconquista.
AJ,
I think the whole argument is a circular firing squad, and I blame the President.
He came out for comprehensive reform of immigration, but did nothing to push his plan, no investment of “capital” as he would put it.
So now, why doesn’t the President take a page from Bill Clinton and start using the power of Presidential directives to do something about the problem of employment of illegal aliens. These simple things would make those who are for hard measures happy, and make those of us who just want to see something done happy because something is being done.
Presidential orders like:
Direct the Social Security Administration to turn over a list to ICE of companies with greater than some fixed number of unmatched SSN to employees.
Direct ICE to investigate all companies so identified.
Direct SS Administration to send “please explain” letters to all businesses who have any unmatched SSN numbers.
By the way unmatched SSN numbers are those already in the system, those for dead people, those which have been never turned in.
Ken,
If you are going to pretend to use my positions note I am not against Muslims. I was horrified by the treatment of the UAE regarding the Dubai Ports International fiasco. And I am 100% clear that I worry about Islamo Fascists – not muslims.
Sorry kid, but you are the biggoted one. Don’t try and bring me into your little insecurity complex. I have a very clear record.
Bill In AZ,
I live in Herndon, VA which is an epicenter in this debate. Since my two older kids went through elementary school over 6 years ago, my first graders are faced with classes full of kids who cannot speak english. We are swamped by illegal immigrants.
The fence is fine with me – as part of a comprehensive solution. It was never going to be the only solution, and making it first was a dumb political move. Conservatives were winning the LEGAL immigrant vote under Bush. We need the law abiding hispanic citizens and hispanic guest workers to join with us in controlling our borders and uncovering those who are sneaking around under the radar. The 10-12 million person underground economy is a perfect hiding place for Al Qaeda cells numbering 20 or so people. This is why the comprehensive solution was critical to security. If we could bring the 10-12 million people into the open economy then there was no haystack for the terrorist needles to hide under.
But no. The hard liners gambled and lost. And they lost big time. They are irrelevant. That is something everyone who disagreed with them can now safely say. Bush’s reform package had 60-70% support. It will pass. Threats from the hardliners simply destroys their credibility. Personally, I could care less who loses credibility if the result is we open the immigration worker community to some sunlight and rid this country of one of the largest potential Al Qaeda hiding places.
In the light of security needs, hurt feelings mean absolutely nothing to me.
Steve_LA,
Bush had a solution that included the Fence. The hard right fought it and caused hispanic americans to leave the party. All this minutiae is meaningless – like the ‘Fence Only’ crowd now are. I am concerned with security. The mechanics of tracking can be made to work. The House gambled and lost. Any more threats from them are simply nails in their coffins – not the independents like me.
aj,
what i found and continue to find absurd without condescending is your twisting of the facts to suit your support of a long running failed policy. when bush started his call for immigration reform, for which he should be commended, there was no fence involved. there was talk of more patrol people and electronic fencing all similar to the losing positions of the past 40 years. myself and a large group of folks championed by charles krauthammer and many other leading conservative journalists/bloggers stressed that approach was BS. we now have a fence and the next steps are possible. please stop tying yourself up in a knot along with crosspatch and the rest of the open border crowd thinking that the “fence first” equals “fence only”. you are starting to sound like the “fence only” deportation crowd– just from the other side.
and for the record if you recall the original debate in the house criminalizing of the current aliens as felons it was outed for the disaster it was. the repubs tried to strike it from the bill and were prevented by the dems. most of what i consider the draconian/stalinist enforcements reforms are in the original and new bill supported by the president and the dems. to repeat i support a fence first followed by a ten year green card. all criminals now and in the future thrown over the fence. end of story. shut down all immigration for a few years and let the free market work out the details on this side of the fence. then a worker program, if we need one, can be instituted.
AJ,
OK, but I think the President can reach out to the get tough faction by doing things like I outlined above.
The reason why illegal aliens are coming here are jobs, make it harder for them to secure jobs and you can cut down on the numbers. It’s part of the whole fence and everything else, and is a re framing of the issue from beating up on illegals to enforcing the law, a traditional Republican value.
Oh the hard core folks may be irrelevant at this point, but the point of the last election in my book is to try to reach out to even those that may now not be reliant, not bully boys of the past.
AJ,
You told Ken “Fear of a race or a group is a sure sign of insecurity.†My Spanish ancestors were in Florida before the United States of America existed. My Spanish ancestors learned how to speak English because an overwhelming number of English speaking settlers moved in from the US after the US was created. My father’s mother (my grandmother) had a Spanish maiden name. My father and uncles all looked Mediterranean. When I visited Spain as a young man, I had more than one local come up to me and ask me for street directions. I knew a little Spanish and they knew a little English. We were able to establish that they thought that I was a local but that I was only a tourist. Because someone believes that illegal behavior should not be rewarded, that does not make him a racist.
Enforcement,
I know someone who voted for Bush twice but did not vote during the 2006 election. She is a white woman who dated a black man when she was young and is currently married to a man who has a Jewish grandfather and has a nephew who is one-quarter Mexican and one-quarter African American. Although AJ would label her as being a racist because she believes that the President should faithfully execute the existing law, Bush’s support for illegal immigration caused her to not vote this time.
I was not surprised by Bush’s pro-illegal immigration position because of his record as the Governor of Texas.
I am a Jeffersonian Democrat.
America’s billionaires want an America that contains a population that is Balkanized without a common sense of history because they own the television networks that propagandize in both Spanish and English. As long as they have a large enough population of “victims†that their demagogue politicians can rely on to be their voter base, they can rule America for the benefit of their multinational corporations.
Because the billionaires who control the news media and entertainment industry approve of the Democrat Party propaganda that is passed off as news and entertainment, my guess is that the Democrat Party must now be more Hamiltonian than the Republican Party. Therefore, I hold my nose and vote Republican as the lesser of two Hamiltonian evils.
I was able to vote for a Republican Congresswoman who was against illegal immigration who was targeted by the Democrats with a massive advertising budget and one of the local TV stations that is owned by the NYT. She won reelection with a comfortable margin. I voted for Senator Allen who was against illegal immigration and who lost by a small margin.
The Bush family has a solid Hamiltonian Republican tradition. George W. Bush has no sons (at least that we -or maybe even he- knows about). His brother JEB has sons. George W. Bush is a nice guy and a great uncle. I can’t blame him for wanting his nephew, George Prescott Bush, to be another President Bush. Of course, by the time George P. is ready to run for President, America’s Spanish speaking population will have increased greatly and he may run as a Democrat. I think that he will be able to carry the Mexican American vote as long as he runs as a Democrat. For a preview of Coming Attractions, please see the website as follows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Bush
All,
I think Ken has a peculiar, eurocentric viewpoint that a tour of Silicon Valley, CA would disabuse him of.
Gigword seems to think Bush I favors illegal immigration and billionaires mostly benefit.
I doubt both. But I do agree that big (junk) media is dominated by secular liberals who feel superior to everyone else.
AJ – Thanks for the response. I think that where some of us differ from your perspective is that you see “fence only”. I guess I don’t see “fence only”. Maybe I’m missing something. When I finally see “fence” enter into lawmakers discussions, I see “fence” along with a whole pile of current and existing laws that are virtually unenforceable without a “fence” so “fence” looks pretty good to me. In one of my volunteer duties, I listen to law enforcement radio constantly so I can respond when needed. I frequently hear things like “van full of UDA’s” (undocumented aliens), or even worse, OTM’s (other than Mexicans). Calls to ICE or Immigration, or any other agency who might deal with them are either unanswered (too busy, too few people, too many UDA’s or OTM’s, no space for them, no vehicles to transport, etc) and what happens off the radio is that they get released. Law enforcement has no choice. The local law enforcement is too swamped as it is with normal work. They head to CA, OR, WA, and I guess VA now (you need to tighten your laws to make them just a little worse than the neighboring state). We need a fence to stem the flow, then maybe law enforcement can enforce the pile of laws they already have to work with. If we need more, fine, but we can’t enforce what we already have because we’re overrun on the border.
Steve:
This is so typical. Bush supported a plan that had the support of two thirds of the country and the response was pure hostility from the right.
Take bloggers for instance, Malkin went way off the deep end, La Shawn Barber talked about impeachment and polipundit said the man could go eff himself.
And now you say Bush should have worked harder at getting these people to go with the program? Bush may be responsible for his own mistakes but he should not have to be responsible for everyone else’s. They screwed up and stabbed the man in the back and hurt their own party, now the Democrats have the House.
Terrye
Bush supported a plan that had the support of two thirds of the country?
Was there a poll that said this? If so, it may have been right. I personally feel like only about 40% felt that way, about 30 Dems and 10 Repubs. Two small changes in the comprehensive bill most likely would have gotten it passed. One, Secure border (fence first) and two, no amnesty(conditions for citizenship same as for everyone). These two and keep all the other provisions the same and I think it would have been a winner. But I don’t know and it doesn’t matter now anyhow.
I am concerned about the ability of Al Qaeda to get across the border, but as conditions are, there is little to stop them. A fence would likely change the odds only slightly.
I sure don’t have the answers and I have heard no one with a plan that I think will work satisfactorily.
The no. 1 objective should be to stop illegal entry into the US.
No one know how to do that.
“Exit polling put immigration as No. 6 in priority.”
That is probably a good thing because if it had been a higher priority, the House Republicans would have probably done much worse. Most polls I saw put 60 to 70 percent of the polled against the House Republican position with most supporting the Senate compromise position (the American people tend to support bi-partisan compromises even when they give neither side all of what they want ). Mut remember that many elections were tight and many won with 51% or less of the vote. A few thousand hispanic votes in some areas could have made all the difference.
First of all, it was not “fence only”. It was “fence first”.
I hear so much of “jobs that Americans won’t do” but in all of those jobs, lawn service, hotel housekeeping, etc, the percentage of illegals doing those jobs are no more than 50%? Who the hell are the other 50%? Martians? So obviously, the illegals are doing jobs that other Americans WILL do.
Have we become so PC that we are now going to use the bleating heart meter to rate violation of our laws? If I rob a 7-11 because I didn’t have a job and my family was hungry, can I get a “get out of jail free” card? After all, I was just trying to get some cash to feed my family.
And the fence is going to go down the tubes with the Dems in power. It hasn’t been funded yet and it won’t be.
So all of you who don’t mind paying higher school taxes for more classrooms and teachers and teachers to teach English as A Second Language; for all of you who don’t mind paying higher insurance premiums because hospitals and clinics have to make up the money lost treating illegals; for all of you who don’t mind paying higher income tax so we can provide housing, food stamps, WIC, AFDC and other social benefits for illegals because of their substandard wages, would you please pick up my share of the tab?
So, the people who sought to punish he republicans in the last election thereby causing a democratic congressional disaster are saying that they will punish the republicans again if they don’t get their own way. Talk about stupid or better yet cutting off their noses to spite their faces. I get so tired of factions in the party running amok over something dear to their hearts. I want more protection on the border and deal with the immigrants afterwards. The open borders are dangerous and people are still coming in by the thousands every month. But I am not going to desert common sense and act so childish about not getting my way implicitly over the border. I try to keep my eye on the big picture and getting another democrat congress is not an option to me
Retiree05,
I understand the point. I am awash in illegal immigrants where I live. But I know one thing for sure – we need them out from the underground into the light of day. The Fence has passed. Any attempt to threaten any future comprehensive reform will lead to the Reps being a permanent minority. Please get over the hyperbole and realize there are penalties – just not what you envisioned. The worst case scenario is Reps do it again and elect a Dem President. When will we stop placing loser bets
I understand that Retiree05 believes strongly in his position but this isn’t a matter of what is “right” or “wrong”. That position has been well stated and the people aren’t buying it. We heard the position, we don’t agree. Let’s all move forward. There comes a time when it is in the overall best interest to agree to disagree on an issue, accept that one isn’t able to convince the majority and move on.
Digging in one’s heels on a very clearly minority view isn’t in the best interests of either side of the issue. This issue is going to come up again in the new Congress and what can the Republicans do about it this time? Pretty close to “very little”. In fact, I just saw on Bluecrab that the House is now talking about repealing the fence authorization so even the fence that was passed might never get built. The world isn’t black/white and people with that kind of thinking on issues often find themselves marginalized. The House Republicans dug in their heels and were booted out of office and now what little they did manage to do is at risk of being undone. Thanks for very little.